2017 in Movies: The First Six Months

THE TOP 51. Hidden Figures (review)"It’s a story that few people outside of NASA may have ever heard, but it’s a truly amazing and goosebump-inducing one, and Hidden Figures does a brilliant job sharing it. It’s a movie full of heart and feeling and inspiration, as important as it is entertaining."

2. Baby Driver (review) "Wright presents this all in his own inimitable, superbly-choreographed style, keeping the pace flying along while simultaneously developing characters and furthering the plot. Baby Driver isn’t just fun to watch, it’s a great story, and in Wright’s capable hands, it becomes something just short of a masterpiece."

3. Jackie (review) "While the narrative in the brilliant screenplay by Noah Oppenheim is continuously jumping around, the story (and the film) as a whole works, not only due to Portman’s powerful, anchoring performance but also because of Larrain’s perfect execution and the noteworthy work of editor Sebastián Sepúlveda."

4. The Beguiled (review) "The Beguiled is a haunting, even frightening film that will burrow into your brain and leave you shaken. It’s also one of the more subtly stunning achievements to hit theaters this year, a true beauty that never lets you stop guessing what lies beneath."

5. Get Out (review) "Peele, who also wrote the script, mixes elements of standard horror fare (jump scares and the like) with a subtle yet scathing commentary on race in America to give us both a deftly crafted masterwork and a pulpy matinee thriller in one."

THE REST6. A United Kingdom7. Patriots Day8. Wonder Woman9. Alien: Covenant10. Kong: Skull Island11. Split12. The Founder13. The Zookeeper's Wife14. Colossal15. Logan16. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 217. Life18. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales19. John Wick 220. Gifted21. Transformers: The Last Knight22. Cars 323. Before I Fall24. Going in Style25. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie26. The Lego Batman Movie27. Despicable Me 328. The Promise29. Beauty and the Beast30. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter31. Snatched32. The Fate of the Furious33. Live By Night34. All Eyez on Me35. Ghost in the Shell36. Collide37. Fist Fight38. Underworld: Blood Wars39. Rough Night40. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword41.The Space Between Us

THE BOTTOM 542. The Mummy (review) "Part camp, part bland horror, and part Indiana Jones wannabe, The Mummy does nothing particularly well. It’s a movie in search of an identity, seemingly unable to decide what it wants to be. And we’re all left wondering how it ever got made in the first place."

43. Baywatch (review) "Say what you will about the original Baywatch, it certainly had its moments, and it wisely refrained from ever taking itself too seriously. The movie, though, is an exercise in stupidity, and how it was ever greenlit in the first place boggles the mind."

44. The Circle (review) "I’m sure all involved thought they were signing on to make a timely, taut thriller steeped in today’s tech-heavy, invasive world, but the end result is frankly laughable. Everything you see has been done before (and done much better)...making The Circle the movie equivalent of a 404 error."

45. CHIPS (review) "From its start, and straight through to the finish that sometimes you feel is never going to come, CHIPS is nothing but an exercise in idiocy and half-hearted filmmaking, and despite a cameo at the end, it’s hard to believe that anyone who had a part in the original series (much less the movie-going public in general) would find anything worthwhile about it."

46. The House (review) "In what may be the most spectacular squandering of talent ever, Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler lead a talented cast in a mind-numbingly idiotic (not to mention bizarrely bloody and violent) unforgivably bad movie. Even the worst, most half-baked Saturday Night Live sketches at least demonstrate a semblance of effort. The House, though, is nothing but an abject disaster from start to finish.”